The Dee Valley Killings

by Simon McCleave

  For a moment, Nick remembered the last time he had had sex before Amanda. It was while he was still drinking and it had been a clumsy, awkward and unsatisfying experience, some of which had been lost to a blackout.

  A moment later, they crashed to the bed and made love with an urgency that he found overwhelming. It was like nothing that he had experienced before. A moment where lust and love had fused together. It seemed to heave waves of emotion over him that were indescribable.

  And then they climaxed loudly together in the darkness. It was perfect.

  For the next few moments, they kissed, giggled and held each other in the stillness of the night.

  ‘Sober sex is great, isn’t it?’ Nick said as he recovered his breath.

  ‘Sober sex with anyone is great?’ Amanda asked with a wry smile.

  ‘You know what I mean. Sober sex with you.’

  They kissed again and smiled at each other. Amanda pulled the duvet up to her waist, lay back and sighed.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Bit of cliché, isn’t it?’ Nick joked.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll wait.’

  ‘I don’t mind. After that, I don’t think I’ll care about anything ever again.’

  Amanda rolled over onto her elbow, moved a sweaty strand of hair from her face and winked. ‘I love you, Nicholas Evans, you know that?’

  ‘I love you too, Mandy.’ Nick smiled. The other day it had just slipped out, but this time he knew he meant those words. There had been so many times when he hadn’t. He had worried that he never would.

  Amanda grabbed a remote from the side of the bed, pressed a button and the album What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye began to play. ‘Best album ever made, I swear down.’

  ‘You “swear down”? What are you, twelve?’

  ‘And for the record, if you ever call me Mandy again, I will strangle you.’ Amanda laughed.

  ‘Threatening a police officer? You should be careful. Water?’

  ‘Please.’

  Nick got out of bed and headed for the kitchen. It felt strange to feel this good without something artificially buoying his spirits. As he looked around the kitchen to find something to eat, he gazed at the photos of Amanda’s travels and adventures. He felt a twinge of warmth and excitement; it was lovely to think that he was with someone who was well-travelled and had such broad horizons. Some of the women in his past were so parochial, they thought a trip down to London was the height of adventure.

  Nick’s eye was then drawn to a photo of a group of friends. Four thirty-something women with happy smiling faces. Amanda was in the middle with stylish sunglasses and a beaming smile. The background was snowy and mountainous. It looked like they had been skiing. One of the friends, a dark-skinned woman with black curly hair, had a bottle of beer in her hand.

  Nick had never been skiing. Maybe that’s something he and Amanda could do. His mind ran away with itself, creating images of him and Amanda in the snow with all the cheese and tackiness of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ pop video.

  Gazing back at the photo, Nick studied Amanda’s friends in more detail. On the far right, a dark-haired girl was carrying a rucksack. At the very edge of the photo, he could see that a red square had been sewn onto the pocket of the rucksack. He then zoned in on the bottle of beer in her hand. Was he envious? Maybe for a second, until Nick realised that he had lost the ability to sip slowly from a bottle of beer or two decades ago.

  His eye was drawn back to the red square on the rucksack. It wasn’t a square, it was a flag. Nick thought of the Welsh flag and the red dragon. He considered it the best national flag in the world.

  Nick inspected the flag on the rucksack again.

  Red and white with a maple leaf.

  A Canadian flag.

  Jesus Christ! You have got to be kidding me!

  THE VILLAGE OF TYDDYN Llwyn, close to Porthmadog, had a large holiday resort of over two hundred cabins, static caravans and even villas. It had changed a lot over the years and was far swankier these days, Gates surmised. He had been there with Kerry on their honeymoon. The spring of 1995. Robson and Gerome’s ‘Unchained Melody’ seemed to play from every radio in the place. But it was familiar to Gates. And that made it ideal.

  The resort was completely closed in December and so it was the perfect spot for him to hide out.

  Ella had started to annoy him. He had told her that he would slit her throat if she screamed. However, she had insisted on a constant stream of psychobabble so he had replaced the gag.

  Gates had selected a huge log cabin at the far end of the park, which had magnificent views over Snowdonia’s mountains. It was dark now, and Gates had illuminated the living space with candles so as not to draw any attention. Ella was strapped tightly to a wooden dining chair beside a long dining table. Relieved that she had long since given up struggling, crying or making any form of sound, Gates watched her as she stared ahead out of the window into the darkness.

  As Gates began to make a fire, his footsteps echoed off the wooden walls and ceiling. There was a leather sofa and an armchair to one side, and a television mounted to the wall opposite.

  ‘Need to warm this place up, my love,’ Gates said with a smile. As he looked around, he thought about how this is what he had intended for the annexe of his home. Not with all the wood, of course, but the kind of smart, modern décor that the Air BnB market would appreciate. Tasteful and comfortable.

  Whistling a Beatles’ song to himself, Gates went to the kitchen to prepare some food. He would not be feeding Ella tonight. Starvation takes away a person’s strength and makes them more manageable. Maybe he would give her something in the morning to lift her spirits? ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Sounded like Ella, didn’t it?

  Being in a Scandinavian-style cabin was ironic, Gates thought. Even though his name was English, his father had claimed Norwegian ancestry. Gates was actually derived from the people who lived by the gates of a medieval town. It might be another topic of discussion in the books and articles. He knew that journalists would delve into his childhood to try to explain it all. There had been no obsession with killing insects or animals, which seemed to be a prerequisite of the modern serial killer. Although he did remember a biology class at school where he had dissected a lamb’s hearts. After the class, he had secretly collected up the discarded hearts into a plastic bag and taken them home with him. For the next week or so, he had played around with the hearts, cutting and examining them, until they began to rot. He convinced himself it was quite normal. He had ambitions to be a surgeon and he was just practising for his future career.

  It wasn’t until he stole a mannequin from behind a department store and took it home to have sex with that Gates had started to fear that his mind and his sexual desires were abnormal.

  Gates knew that kidnapping Ella would achieve what he wanted. The strange, intangible bond he had formed with Ruth was confusing him. There was no sexual element to it. But he knew that he felt too compelled to taunt and trick her to get her attention. When he had Ruth’s attention, he felt a sense of calm and peace. Even love. When she deceived him, as she had at the aqueduct, then he became angry, even furious. He had watched from a distance as the man he had paid to wear his jacket and hat, who Gates could only assume was some kind of local drunk, had been arrested. There had been guns in his face and he was forced to lie on the wet ground. No dignity. Ruth had lied to him and broken her promise. That’s not what he wanted, and she would yield to him. The only conclusion that he could draw was that Ruth had become some kind of maternal figure to him. There was an innate kindness and compassion to her, even when she had dealt with him. Maybe that was it? Ruth was the polar opposite of his own mother, a cold, emotionally stunted and even cruel woman. More importantly, he could never get her attention.

  He had a younger brother who had Downs syndrome. If his mother showed any affection, it was reserved for James. It wasn’t a great psychological leap for Gates to realise that he was attempting to play
out some fantasy where Ruth was now his mother. A new, better, more compassionate version. And now he needed to rewrite his own life history by controlling ‘Mother’ and forcing her to give him attention, by any means necessary.

  Quite what he was going to do with Ella, he wasn’t sure yet. In this new fantasy scenario, she was effectively his sister. And he wanted to keep ‘Mother’ on side. He needed to give her a call soon. Just to put her mind at rest. Poor her. She must be going out of her mind with worry. It was difficult being a parent, he presumed, even when your children were all grown up.

  Then Gates had another thought. Didn’t Ella actually pose a threat to the attention he might receive from ‘Mother’? She was a sibling and therefore a rival for affection and awareness. Sibling rivalry could get pretty nasty. Violent even. Cain and Abel were brothers and look at how that ended.

  Might it not be better if Ella were no longer around? Didn’t killing her take her out of the picture once and for all? That was the answer, Gates decided. Killing her did seem to make perfect, logical sense. There was a certain biblical logic to it.

  And so the decision was made. He would kill Ella to get her out of the way. Not tonight. Tomorrow morning maybe? At dawn. Yes. Killing her at dawn would be a poetical statement.

  IT WAS NOW VERY LATE, but CID was on high alert. Having informed Drake the night before that Gates had Ella, Ruth was now sitting with several CID officers. She was frantic but tried to keep the dark thoughts from her mind. Gates’s MO had always been men. Normally ones that he had found attractive. That’s what he got off on. Taking Ella was clearly a way of getting her attention, just as Professor Douglas had predicted. It could also be some kind of revenge for the bungled arrest at the aqueduct. Maybe Gates had been watching from a distance? In fact, she was pretty sure that he had been. Trying to hold it together, Ruth was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything.

  Tapping at a computer, Sian was on the CID system, sifting through everything they had on Gates. It had been checked before, but maybe they had missed something.

  ‘Everything that Gates has done has been carried out in the Dee Valley,’ Ruth said urgently. ‘He’s a creature of habit. He likes to stick close to areas that he feels safe or secure in. He could have gone anywhere. He could have driven into England. But he’s kept in a pretty small area because that’s all he knows. And wherever he is keeping Ella ...’ At that moment, the words stuck in Ruth’s throat. She coughed, but no one would blame her for feeling emotional.

  Drake came over and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Ruth. Come on, let’s have a chat in your office?’

  Nodding but lost in thought, Ruth followed Drake into her office and sat down.

  Drake took a moment as he rested against her desk. ‘I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, Ruth. My kids are everything. And I’m sure it’s the same with Ella.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘It’s my fault this has happened.’ The guilt that Ella had been drawn into her dark, evil world made the blame and fear all the harder to bear.

  ‘No. No, it’s not. Gates is ...’ Drake paused as he searched for the right words. ‘We know what Gates is. You are not responsible for what he does.’

  ‘He’s got Ella because of me!’ Ruth raised her voice. Her whole body seemed to tingle with terror and anxiety. The depths of her stomach were hollow with a dark uneasiness.

  ‘This is what I need you to do, Ruth.’ Drake looked directly at her. ‘I need you to go home and get some rest, however hard that might be.’

  ‘You’re not taking me off this case.’ Ruth thundered adamantly.

  ‘You know how this works, Ruth.’

  ‘No. You can’t do that to me,’ Ruth said, her voice breaking a little. How was she meant to go home and get some rest? She wasn’t going to rest until she had Ella back.

  ‘Come on, Ruth. You’re an experienced copper. No one is going to allow you to work on a case that you’re now so personally involved with,’ Drake said.

  She knew that what Drake had said was true. Yet the idea of not being involved in an operation to rescue her own daughter made her feel sick and hopelessly out of control.

  ‘I’m sorry ...’ Ruth mumbled as a tear ran down her face. She didn’t want Drake to see her cry, but it was no use. She was overwhelmed.

  ‘I will keep you posted at every point. I promise,’ Drake said as he put his hand on her arm.

  ‘I want Sian to be directly involved in the case,’ Ruth said.

  Drake paused for a moment, his eyes lost in temporary thought. Although her and Sian’s relationship was not common knowledge, and technically not appropriate because of their differing ranks, she suspected that Drake had worked it out by now. He was canny and intuitive. ‘Okay. But her work on the case has to be dispassionate and fully professional.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ruth said as she got up. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘We will find her, Ruth. And we’ll get her back safely.’

  ‘I know that, sir.’

  Ruth left the office but she was already plotting how she could continue the search from home. There was no way that she was going to sit at home twiddling her thumbs, waiting for her colleagues to find Ella. She tapped Sian’s shoulder. ‘He’s sending me home,’ she said quietly.

  Sian nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll be here for a bit.’ Their eyes met for a moment. ‘We’ll get her back, I promise.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Having not slept well, Nick had gone into Llancastell nick early, only to find out the horrific news about Gates’s kidnapping of Ella. Drake had asked him to help the team in the hunt for Ella while keeping any lines of enquiry over Harvey Pearson’s murder going too. Nick had tried to call Ruth, but she wasn’t answering her phone. He couldn’t imagine how she was feeling.

  Sipping his hot coffee, Nick looked at the computer screen in front of him. Did he need to worry about the photo he had seen in Amanda’s house? Four women on holiday together. One of them mixed race and another with a Canadian flag stitched to her rucksack. Fuck! Nick sat back angrily. He didn’t believe in coincidences. No decent detective ever did. But how was he meant to focus objectively on what it could mean? He didn’t even want to entertain those thoughts. Could Amanda and her three friends have been on Snowdonia on the afternoon of Sunday 9 December? Did they have some involvement in Harvey Pearson’s death? Amanda knew that Nick was working on the case, so if they had been there, she would have told him by now. Either that or she was hiding something. That made him more than uneasy. Had Amanda even targeted him to find out about the case? Did that mean that everything that had developed between him and Amanda had been a sham, a pretence? The twist of pain that thought brought was nothing compared to what he would experience if that were true. He feared it would send him back to drink, just to deal with the agony of it. Then he thought of Amanda and how she had been with him. His instinct told him that she wasn’t faking any of that. No one could be that cold and calculating, could they?

  The simple thing would be to ask her where she was. However, there was no decent way of asking her without flagging up his suspicions. Who were her friends? If any of them were from Canada, had they even been in the UK in December? Was he just overthinking the whole thing and there was a perfectly logical explanation? It wouldn’t be the first time that he had got things wrong. His mind wasn’t wired properly. Alcoholics’ brains were different. That’s why he had a sponsor for God’s sake! To give him perspective. But he couldn’t ring Bill. How would he explain that he had fallen in love with a newcomer but now suspected that she might be a witness to, or even involved in, a murder on Snowdon? Bill would sack him as a sponsee on the spot. And he was well within his rights to, Nick knew. It was Bill who had got him sober and helped him stay that way in recent months.

  Feeling that the integral structures of his life were collapsing in on him, Nick felt the despair descend. It was the kind of despair that came with a relapse.

  Screwing his eyes shut for a moment to try to stop the incessan
t burble and chattering in his head, Nick opened his emails. He saw that there was one from Lillie’s Little Café in Llanberis. He had been in there to question the owner, Lillie Milton, about whether she had seen the four women on the 9 December. Lillie couldn’t remember but said she would check CCTV and talk to staff, who were mostly part-time.

  Lillie had emailed him at midnight and attached a file.

  Hi DS Evans,

  It’s Lillie from Lillie’s Little Café in Llanberis. You asked me about December 9th. I’ve done a screenshot of the CCTV of four women who came in for breakfast that day. I’m afraid no one could remember much about them or if they had accents. Sorry to not be more helpful. If you would like to see all the CCTV footage, I could ask someone to help me send it to you, or you could look at it here.

  Kind regards, Lillie.

  Feeling agitated, Nick clicked to open the image file. A black-and-white, high-angle photo showed a round corner table where four women sat eating. He had been praying to see one or more of the Chivers sisters sitting there.

  However, he could immediately see it wasn’t them. Two of the women had their backs to the camera, wearing hats and scarves. One of the women facing them was drinking a large mug of tea so her face was obscured. The other woman’s face was a little grainy, but even though she was wearing a woolly hat, he could see that she had dark skin. She could be mixed race. And she could be the woman he had seen on the wall at Amanda’s house.

  Knowing that he had a spare key to her house from the other night, Nick grabbed his coat. Though it sickened him, he knew that he had to go to Amanda’s house and search for what he could find. Technically, he knew he should wait for a search warrant, but he didn’t care about that. He wasn’t thinking straight. He just needed to know the truth. Now.